Fig tree puts forth leaves[Mt. 24:32.] See endnote for Lk. 21:30. Saint Ambrose: “Christ mentions that from the tenderness of this tree and its leaves, the advent of summer is wont to be foretold in a twofold sense, signifying that the vainglory of the Jewish people, which they feigned, had faded like a flower at the coming of the Lord, because they remained barren of works, and that the day of judgment is to be measured like the coming of the summer, when the mature fruits of all the earth are stored away, from the fullness of the Church in which the Jews also are to believe.” [Exposition, Bk. VII, § 160.]

[Mt. 24:36.] See endnote for Mk. 13:32. “But My Father only” (eij mh; oJ Pathvr Mou movno~). Saint Basil the Great: “He could not say what is false Who said, ‘All things whatsoever the Father hath are Mine [Jn. 16:15],’ but one of the things which the Father hath is knowledge of that day and of that hour. In the passage in Matthew, then, the Lord, made no mention of Himself—as He does in Mark [13:32]—as a matter beyond controversy, and said that the angels knew not and that His Father alone knew, tacitly asserting the knowledge of His Father to be His own knowledge too, because of what He had said elsewhere, ‘Even as the Father knoweth Me, I also know the Father [Jn. 10:15].’” [“Letter CCXXVI, To Amphilochios,” in Nicene, 2nd Ser., VIII:277.]